snap7866

8 de junio de 2026

Outstanding!

OK, these are about my favorite purchase of 2026 so far. I got them at a great price here - on sale, not sure that's still going on. I was looking for higher end headphones but everyone says these are the baseline headphones that all others are judged by.I hate expert reviews. Reading them, I'm left with the impression these are the best and the worse. I'm saying I love them The should is great. You can add a balanced cord if so inclined (I did). They are well built, soft and comfortable on the head and ears and sound absolutely great to me. I Eq them up a bit on the low end and down a bit on the high end. Supertramp, Pink Floyd, Queen, Queensryche all sound excellent.Keep in mind, these are open back (for a reason). The fallout from that is that during soft passages you can hear your surroundings. During loud passages, your surroundings can hear you. My wife wears her WH1000MX6 noise cancellers so that takes care of my concerns.If you are looking to own some of the best headphones around, headphones you can judge all others by for better/worse/different, these could be the ones for you. In my case, my search for higher end headphones is on hold.Ver más

14 personas la encontraron útil

Steve Gerik

8 de julio de 2026

Great value great headphones

These are really great headphones. the spacial soundstage feels open and wide and the EQ is very balanced. They are also very accurate and clear in reprducing the fast and technical musical passages. no distortion or negative artifacts. They get very loud, but you will also need to have a good - powerful - headphone amp to be able to drive the 600ohm impedance. I just finished 1.5h of straight listening, and the experience was excellent. they are not fatiguing in the least. They're comfortable to wear and they leave your ears ready to listen to more. great value great headphones.Ver más

3 personas la encontraron útil

Jake

Great Sound, Great Quality.

I've been eyeballing these for a long time, and when I noticed them on sale, I snatched them up almost immediately. I've had a pair of HD588 SE's for a while and wanted an upgrade to something higher quality both sound wise and quality and this pair have not disappointed. I love how much lighter they are, how nicely they clamp down without feeling like it's too tight, and I especially love how nice the foam on the headband is. Do I think they are worth the full price, I'm not quite sure, but I do think I got a great bargain and I love using them, so it's worth considering. The cord length is quite long, and gives a lot of option for where you want to route the cable or how you want to use these headphones, and the upsides is that it's entirely removeable so if it breaks at all, you don't need to buy a whole new headset, just replace the cord, which is a huge plus for me as I have cats that like to chew on cords on occasion, so I never feel the pressure of having to keep it hidden 24/7. Pair these with a set of replacement ear foam from Wicked Cushions, and you have yourself a fantastic headset that'll last you years.Ver más

1 persona la encontró útil

DNLK Productions

People Are Still Reaching for These 30 Years Later. Now I Understand Why.

I admittedly waited a long time to review these headphones, but it wasn't because they weren't noteworthy. Quite the opposite. The HD 600s became such a normal part of my daily workflow and music listening that I eventually forgot they were there. After nearly three years of using them as my primary open-back headphones, I think that's probably the highest compliment I can give them.The HD 600 is one of the most recommended headphones ever made, and there are already countless reviews discussing frequency response graphs, measurements, and technical performance. You'll also find endless debates about how another headphone has better bass extension, a wider soundstage, or more detail for less money. Many of those arguments are true.I just don't think they're the reason people keep recommending the HD 600.After years of living with these headphones, I think the real reason is that they succeed as a complete package. They're more than the sum of their specifications.Build quality and comfort:The first thing I noticed was how quickly they disappeared on my head.The clamp force is firm when they're new, but it relaxes over time without ever feeling loose. They're lightweight, breathable, and surprisingly comfortable for long sessions. I routinely wear them for six to ten hours while working, gaming, or listening to music, and they remain one of the least fatiguing headphones I've ever owned. I tend to fatigue fairly easily with headphones, yet these rarely give me a reason to take them off.Eventually, I stopped thinking about the headphones altogether. They simply became part of my desk.Sound:The HD 600 isn't trying to impress you with overwhelming bass or exaggerated detail. It aims for accuracy, and that philosophy has aged remarkably well.The bass won't satisfy someone looking for the impact of a closed-back headphone or the sub-bass emphasis common in many modern tunings, but what is there is clean, controlled, and believable. Vocals sound wonderfully natural, acoustic instruments have convincing timbre, and nothing feels artificially boosted just to grab your attention.The imaging is excellent, and while the soundstage isn't enormous, it feels cohesive and realistic rather than artificially expansive.I've since added other excellent headphones to my collection, including planar magnetics and several IEMs that outperform the HD 600 in specific technical areas. Some have deeper bass. Some resolve more detail. Some create a larger sense of space.And yet, when I simply want to enjoy music without thinking about the equipment, I still reach for the HD 600 more often than anything else.Long-term ownership:One aspect that doesn't get enough attention is how easy these headphones are to own.The HD 600 has been around for decades because the design simply works. As a result, replacement parts are everywhere. I replace the ear pads and inner foam roughly once a year, swap the headband pad as needed, and cables are inexpensive and readily available. Even drivers and individual components can be replaced if necessary.In an era where many electronics feel disposable, the HD 600 is refreshingly repairable. That's an understated part of its value.Final thoughts:I don't believe the HD 600 is recommended because it's objectively better than every other headphone on the market.It's recommended because, taken as a complete product, it's exceptionally difficult to beat.The comfort, balanced tuning, repairability, long-term support, and timeless design come together to create something that quietly earns a permanent place on your desk.The best comparison I can make is that it's like your favorite neighborhood coffee shop. There may be trendier places with more elaborate drinks or flashier presentations, but this is the one you keep coming back to because it consistently delivers exactly what you wanted.The HD 600 offers one less decision in a world full of endless choices.You put them on, they disappear, and the music becomes the thing you're paying attention to instead of the headphones.

Tony

23 de mayo de 2017

Detail at all costs

If you're reading this, you're deep enough into the audio hobby to have realized an important psychological truth about yourself: you can't leave well enough alone. Neither can I. That's why, even after falling head over heels in love with the sound of the HD650, I ordered the HD600. I just had to know.The verdict? It's almost too close to call, but for my preferences the 650 is the better headphone. The two have been compared to death online, but if you have the capacity to think for yourself, audio review sites and forums are usually an unsavory if fascinating combination of shilling, self-justification, and "follow the leader" parroting of received opinions. Many self-proclaimed "audiophiles" have strong opinions about equipment they've never actually heard, which I can't accept.Given that, I decided the only way to compare the two headphones honestly was to listen to both myself for hours, going back and forth on a wide variety of recordings. The difference between a good recording and a bad recording dwarfs the difference between lossy and lossless, and the HD600 (more so than the HD650) may end up changing your taste in music because it makes good recordings sound SO GOOD and bad recordings sound SO BAD. In other words, it reveals the "truth" of the recording, and sometimes the truth hurts—it's really hard to enjoy The Killers now.The fact is that the 600 and 650 are ultimately more alike than different, and the popular insistence that they sound completely different has more to do with what Freud called "the narcissism of small differences" than the headphones themselves. If you Google some variation on "HD650 vs HD600," you'll hear over and over that the 650 is "bassier" or "darker." Not really. There's actually very little difference across this parameter. Piano music presents an exception, but this is rarely what people think of as a bassy genre.There are two significant differences. The first is soundstage. The HD650's soundstage is wider, but that doesn't mean it can make a cramped recording sound airy. The HD600's soundstage is more intimate; there's less space between left and right channels, but it's not a huge difference, and I could see people preferring (or at least not minding) the HD600's tighter spacing.The most striking difference between the two headphones is in what I'd call "smoothness." The best analogy I can think of comes from digital photography. As an image sensor increases its sensitivity, it also increases its noise because you can't amplify a signal without also amplifying noise. There are two rival philosophies for dealing with noise: leave it as "grain" or smooth it out. Grain has its devotees, and the advantage of grain is that it preserves fine detail. The disadvantage is that past a certain point it becomes a distraction. The advantage of smoothness, meanwhile, is that it looks superficially nicer. The disadvantage is that when you look closely you won't see all the fine details. Like all things, it's a continuum of compromise. The 600 is the headphone to get if you value detail at the cost of an occasionally unpleasant grainy and even metallic quality to the sound. The 650 is the one to get if you care more about music than sound and don't care if your headphones sand down the sharp edges of your music a bit.Going back and forth between the two, it quickly becomes clear that the 650 is the stronger all-around performer: it sounds nicer on more recordings and across more genres. The 600, meanwhile, is the champion of a particular niche: good recordings with lots of micro detail. Want to be able to count how many times the skin of a drum reverberates after it's struck? Want to hear such fine vocal gradations you'll know how a singer felt during recording? The 600 is for you.Make no mistake: at its best, the 600 produces the most astonishingly detailed sound I've ever heard. Unfortunately, at its worst it sounds grainy, jumbled, and not particularly musical. I'm sorry to report that piano music sounds particularly off on the 600: low frequencies disappear and take the fullness of the keys with them. Vocals can sound oddly recessed, even far away. In general, the 600 seems to fare better with female vocals than male ones, and with strings over pianos. It's absolutely glorious for acoustic guitar, but then, so is the 650.The 650's great advantage lies in its ability to bring out vocals like a spotlight. They stand out so clearly and powerfully from the instrumentation that you'll feel like you're hearing your favorite songs for the first time. The effect is really quite incredible: it's like there's a special sonic space reserved for vocals and unpolluted by other sounds. Based on Sennheiser's own specs, the 650 has lower distortion than the 600 and it's clearly a more refined driver unit. Whatever the technical reason, the 650's background is pitch black: sounds rise from and fall back into a sea of silence. Be forewarned: a well-recorded vocal track through the 650 may bring tears to your eyes, and that's why I kept the 650 and returned the 600.Finally, let's talk about measurements. While there's a valid SUBJECTIVE argument for preferring the sound of the 600, the 650 has an objectively better driver that improves on its predecessor in every way: higher sensitivity, lower distortion, and better power handling. Here are the figures straight from Sennheiser's manuals, which you can find for yourself on the product pages for both headphones at bhphotovideo[dot]com. The terminology used isn't consistent from one manual to the other, but the parameters in question are the same. I've noted these variations where applicable.Frequency response (-10db): 12 – 38,000 Hz (HD600), 10 – 39,500 Hz (HD650)Impedance: 300 ohms (same for both)Sensitivity/"Loudness" (Sennheiser also calls this "Sound pressure level at 1 kHz"): 97 dB (HD600), 103 dB (HD650)Load rating (Sennheiser also calls this "Long-term max. input power"): 0.2W aka 200mW (HD600), 500mW (HD650)THD (Total Harmonic Distortion): ≤0.1% (HD600), ≤0.05% (HD650)In short, the HD650 will get louder than the 600 because it has higher sensitivity at the same resistance. The fact that it can handle almost twice as much INPUT power is a positive, not a negative; if you turned a decent amp ALL THE WAY UP with the HD600 connected, you could damage or even destroy the drivers. The 650 has enough headroom for more than twice as much input power, but there's little point in driving your headphones loud enough for permanent hearing loss.At the end of the day, headphone preference, like any preference, is primarily subjective, and I can't seriously imagine anyone being unhappy with the HD600.

11 de octubre de 2016

Goldilocks' Cans

It's easy to forget that, next year, the HD 600 will turn 20 years old. Admittedly, audio transducers have a funny way of sticking around longer than just about any other piece of electronics equipment. A line of speakers will, usually, be in production for at least several years. Even when they've been replaced, they usually aren't even close to obsolete, because even mid-fi has gotten pretty far into diminishing returns. But, even in this alternate timeline of audiophile-dom (others might call it an alternate reality, an insane asylum...) the HD 600s are freakin ancient. I can only think of a few other cans with this kind of longevity:The Sony MDR-V6; so old that it still has "for DIGITAL" emblazoned on the side. A quick trip through audio theory will reveal that this is meaningless, but in 1985 it sounded really cool.The Beyerdynamic DT770/880/990; so old that they still have shag carpet earpads.Various Grados; so old that it's too late for anybody to admit they sound like trash. Instead, they just mumble something about "sparkle" and then go buy something else.And yet, 20 years later, the HD600 is still the headphone that, within headphone circles, everybody talks about and everybody has heard. There's a reason for that: it's not just really good. Purely on the strength of its sound, it stands out as excellent. When price is considered? It might just be the best headphone in the world.THE SOUND:Inevitably, whenever anyone tries to talk about the HD600 or the HD650, someone brings up the "Sennheiser Veil." This so-called veil was a kind of muffling of the sound, and the people who complain about it would have you believe that the HD6XX sounds like Apple Earpods.I cannot state emphatically enough how much the veil does not exist. It is either a product of the imagination of people who wish the AKG K701 was a bit brighter, or the result of people trying to plug the HD6XX straight into an inadequate source, i.e. most phones, MP3 players, iPods, laptops, etc. They need an amp. More on that later. At any rate, these headphones are as veiled as Eva Green in The Dreamers. You. Will. See. erm, Hear. Everything.That's both a blessing and a curse. Lesser headphones - even my Sony MDR-V6s, for instance - can mask the flaws in a bad recording. All of those 128kbps MP3s you've pirated because you're a bad person? They're gonna sound awful. If your father-in-law-to-be hands sends you some recordings of his garage band, grab however awful a set of backup cans you need for it to sound good. Because these will tell you the truth. Yet, to a good recording, they are shockingly flattering. If you put garbage in, you'll get garbage out. Give it something good, though, and you'll get magic. I've listened to just about my entire music library with these, and there are a few recordings in particular that really demonstrate how well these shine:-In the Air Tonight (Phil Collins, Face Value, 1981): On a decent-to-good set of headphones, this song sounds ominous; it sounds cool. Whatever. On the HD600s, it's a religious experience. Sounds swirl around your head. The crescendos and diminuendos blow you away. The vocals sound perfect. Incredible.-In Your Eyes (Peter Gabriel, So, 1986): The entire album is fabulous. Listen to it over and over again. But there's a reason this song is singled out. It's a sibilance nightmare. On my MDR-V6s, it's unlistenable above a moderate volume. Enter the HD600s: there's no hiding how much sibilance there is, but they handle it as gracefully as possible.Enough ink has been spilled over how these handle classical and jazz (spoiler: fabulously), and their vocal presentation in particular is spot-on.THE STUFF YOU'LL NEED:To get all of this brilliant sound, you're going to need a few things. First and foremost is an amp. This can get crazy pretty quick, so first let's draw a distinction: solid state vs tubes. The HD600 has a high enough impedance to really get along with OTL amps (ie, most headphone tube amps). This will color the sound somewhat, get hot, be unreliable, need to warm up, etc. If you want to go down this road, you can. There's also a lot of really expensive solid state amps.Or, you could just get a Schiit Magni or a JDS Objective2, both of which sound... well... about perfect.Next, you'll need to think about a DAC. Now, a lot of people just assume they'll need one. That may not be the case. If you have a Retina Macbook Pro, for instance, skip it. You'll never hear the difference between it and whatever you get for 150 bucks. Same deal if you're plugging a (good) CD player or receiver or whatever straight into the amp. If your source is something else, like a midrange PC, you'll need to evaluate this yourself. Unfortunately, I can't help you with that.If you decide you need a DAC, there are a lot of expensive options out there.Or, you could just get a Schiit Modi or a JDS ODAC, both of which sound... well... about perfect.(Side lesson: The internet audiophile community fights back and forth all the time about whether the O2/ODAC or the Magni/Modi is the better setup. Realistically, their performance is nearly identical. Buy whichever you think looks better.)(Another side lesson: You seriously probably don't need to spend a ton of money on DACs and amps. The O2/ODAC was designed by some wacky internet crusader who wanted to prove that the performance of the Benchmark DAC2 and HPA2 could be achieved without spending thousands of dollars. From an engineering perspective, this is obviously possible. If you look into this further, you will still find people who insist that the O2/ODAC doesn't sound as good as significantly more expensive gear. Just remember that these are audiophile crazies, who think they need 192kHz recordings because Nyquist-Shannon doesn't apply to special snowflakes. The two most important things in any digital-to-analog system are the input file and the transducer.)Finally, you're going to need good recordings. iTunes is sufficient. Vinyl is pretty good (repeat after me: vinyl does not sound better than CD, it is objectively worse, a record will only sound great 25 times, and will be the equal of the CD never). CD is your best bet, particularly those mastered before the "loudness wars" started up in the late 1990s. However, the world isn't perfect; fear not, the Senns still sound good with stuff that has a compressed dynamic range (within reason). Anything beyond the Redbook CD standard is simply a ploy to get you to spend more money for things you can't hear, and that your dog can't either.SOME REALITIES:The way that the Senns achieve all this great sound is by being "open-back" headphones. This means that, on the side of the driver opposite your ear, there's just some mesh to protect it from damage. This means that you can't really use these outside a quiet environment, because you'll hear everything around you. It also means that you probably won't want to listen to them in public, because it's really difficult to look cool when everybody knows you're blasting the Bangles.Also, they're ugly as sin. But they aren't leaving your house, so who cares?A WORD ABOUT THE HD650:Released several years after the HD600, the HD650 at first glance looks like an upgrade. That... depends. The HD650 is darker and smoother at the expense of detail. That's all. I prefer its sound signature. But, it usually costs between 75 and 150 dollars more than the HD600, and so it wasn't worth it for me. It probably isn't worth it for you, either.So, yeah. These headphones sound just about dead neutral, wonderfully crisp, and yet smooth enough that you can listen at high volumes without fatigue. They can usually be had for less than 300 dollars. And for the price, they have no equal. Now we just have to hope that someday the HD800S can be such an easy decision to make.